He was kidnapped and mercilessly tortured by steroid-fueled gym rats — but it’s the Hollywood movie about his life that really hurts, a Brooklyn-bred businessman claims in a new lawsuit.
Marc Schiller — whose horrific kidnapping ordeal was the basis of the 2013 dark-comedy hit “Pain & Gain” starring Mark Wahlberg — says he was falsely depicted as a corrupt, “unlikeable, sleazy” braggart in the flick when he was simply the victim.
“They chose to portray me as a bad person and my assailants as nice guys who were just bumbling fools,’’ Schiller, 56, told The Post.
“The movie made a mockery of me and of the pain and suffering that I had endured. … The horrible person on the screen had no resemblance to who I was — or who I am now.”
Schiller, whose complaint is set to be filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, alleges that Paramount Pictures, parent company Viacom, director Michael Bay, Wahlberg and others illegally profited by twisting the truth about Schiller’s sadistic 1994 ordeal at the hands of Miami’s notorious “Sun Gym Gang.”
The film — starring Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and “Monk” actor Tony Shalhoub as Schiller’s character — was heavily marketed as a “true story,’’ Schiller says in the court papers.
The murderous musclemen were led by Daniel Lugo, Wahlberg’s character, and worked out at Miami’s Sun Gym. They targeted Schiller, who moved to Florida after growing up in Brooklyn.
The gang bungled six attempts to abduct the wealthy businessman — including once while dressed as ninjas — before finally succeeding outside his deli in 1994.
They bound and tortured him into signing over his home and the rest of his million-dollar fortune, but Schiller miraculously escaped their many efforts to kill him.
Phone-sex millionaire Frank Griga and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton, were not so lucky a year later. They were both brutally murdered — and their body parts dismembered — by the gang in 1995.
In “Pain & Gain,” Schiller is renamed “Victor Kershaw.” The film waits until its final seconds to provide a disclaimer during the rolling of credits, saying in small print, “Some names have been changed and certain characters, events and dialogue are fictionalized for the purposes of dramatization.”
Schiller’s lawyer, Holly Ostrov-Ronai, said the disclaimer doesn’t cut it because “hardly anyone” watches a film’s closing credits.
She also said that renaming Schiller’s character doesn’t offer the “family man” protection from being misrepresented in the flick as a skirt-chasing, cigar-smoking, recovering alcoholic who was hated by his employees.
She said anyone could assume the depiction of Schiller is accurate since the movie claims to be a “true story.”
While Paramount and others involved in the film’s production are being sued for trying to pass the flick off as a “true story,” Wahlberg is also named as a defendant because he used the film to shill his new line of “Marked” fitness supplements.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified money damages, but Ostrov-Ronai said she believes Schiller is entitled to a jury award of at least $10 million.
“Pain & Gain” was a box-office and DVD success, grossing more than $95 million, or more than triple its budget.
Paramount declined comment. Reps for Viacom and Wahlberg didn’t return messages.
Schiller, who once did jail time for Medicare fraud, was a star witness in the 1998 jury trial in which Lugo and fellow musclemen Noel Doorbal and Jorge Delgado were convicted for the crimes against Schiller and the grisly murders of Griga and Furton.
Lugo and Doorbal were sentenced to death and are still awaiting execution. Delgado got 15 years in prison after copping a plea deal.